Cabinet is three to four weeks away from budget trouble due to ongoing Commons gridlock, Treasury Board President Anita Anand said yesterday. An Opposition filibuster has blocked passage of all money bills: "That is extraordinary. We must vote on these." READ MORE
MPs accusing Employment Minister Randy Boissonnault of identity fraud yesterday were ejected from the Commons for unparliamentary language. Boissonnault for years claimed to be Indigenous, once stating a Cree grandmother told him as a boy: “We come from the land, Randy.” READ MORE
Cabinet has doubled the cost of executive salaries since 2016, new records show. The disclosure follows a Budget Office warning that growth in federal payroll costs was worrisome: "Yes, it is worrisome." READ MORE
Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon yesterday told MPs his unprecedented use of cabinet orders to force unions into binding arbitration was intended to “ensure industrial peace.” MacKinnon in testimony at the Commons human resources committee did not say if he would act to end a five-day strike by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers: "How can we not hear?" READ MORE
A total 880 Canada Revenue Agency employees fraudulently claimed pandemic relief cheques, the highest figure disclosed to date, Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said yesterday. It followed claims by an Agency executive that “not very many” employees were cheats: "We have a zero tolerance policy for fraud." READ MORE
Taxpayers should expect a loss in any sale of the Trans Mountain Pipeline despite cabinet assurances, Budget Officer Yves Giroux said yesterday. Giroux recommended MPs audit billions' worth of cost overruns: "That is a very interesting question." READ MORE
A former deputy industry minister yesterday denied any responsibility for rampant conflicts at the disgraced federal agency Sustainable Development Technology Canada. Retiree John Knubley, testifying by videoconference at the Commons public accounts committee, appeared agitated as MPs accused him of a coverup: "I am not a lawyer." READ MORE
My dad never owned a credit card. If you didn’t have it, you didn’t spend it. I remember him in his later years going to Eaton’s with my mother to buy a new set of appliances, and taking the money from the bank first and walking in there with over a thousand dollars in cash. Excessive borrowing doesn’t work and excessive debt usually results in people having to suffer. I went throughout the province, up and down every corner, and I listened at people’s kitchen tables, town halls – wherever I was, I found a consistent message: Why can’t government live the way we do? Why can’t they live within their means?
